


Vestige

by Somewhat_Inspired



Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime
Genre: Abandonment, Beta Wanted, Bigotry & Prejudice, Experimental Style, Experimentation, Flashbacks, I see it as more platonic or even parental though, Megatron/Soundwave if you squint, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Predacons Rising (Prime Movie), Predacons Rising (Prime Movie), Present Tense, RiD what RiD, Slavery, Starvation, Why Did I Write This?, mpreg sort of but not really, shadowzone
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-28
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14496657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Somewhat_Inspired/pseuds/Somewhat_Inspired
Summary: Soundwave has lots of time to think while trapped in the Shadowzone.





	1. Chapter 1

            It feels too surreal to be true. Even though an Earth week has passed since the battle, he is still inclined to believe it is all an elaborate trick conjured up by his recharge-deprived mind or even a corrupted memory purge brought about by spoiled energon. He simply cannot fathom how a nearly six million stellar-cycle old war had been lost in the span of less than a solar-cycle. In a mere handful of human hours, the Decepticon army and everything they ever stood for had been reduced to rubble by less than a dozen Autobots and their human companions. The very idea is laughable as it is pathetic.

            Soundwave supposes his own current predicament does little to detract from the sense of false reality. He is on the _Nemesis_ , but not entirely. The warship seems to fade and twist around him, warping what used to be familiar and even comforting surroundings into something foreign and almost hostile. The atmosphere also feels heavy somehow, as if the very air is denser and weighs down his armor. Everything is faded and monochrome. Sound echoes as much as it is swallowed up. This world operates with rules Soundwave is not privy to, and the TIC tries his best to ignore the distracting tinge of anxiety in his tanks as he works to figure out a way to escape the mess the Autobots’ pets got him into. After he initially phased through the irritating pink-haired female when attempting to strike at her, he had been too dumbfounded to do anything other than stare as the two humans hurriedly tried to figure out how to operate the _Nemesis_ ’s controls. It wasn’t like he could stop them either; this reality, this “Shadowzone” he was trapped within kept the mech from even laying a servo upon them. He had been forced to stand idly by and watch as everything he and the other Decepticons struggled to accomplish was taken from them.

            Soundwave vents in frustration, the normally barely discernible noise seeming to echo for miles in his sensitive audials. He is the chief Communications Officer and Third in Command of the Decepticons – how could he have fallen for a trap, and a simple one devised by human _children_ no less? It’s humiliating.

            Realizing his mind has started to wander for the third time since being trapped, Soundwave shakes his helm and forces himself to refocus upon his current task. Multiple previous attempts to recreate the double groundbridges that exiled him here have already failed; if he wants to have enough power left in his systems to evade Autobot capture after escaping from the Shadowzone, he will need to rework the algorithms for his inner groundbridge as accurately and efficiently as possible. Even with Laserbeak in stasis and his own non-vitals set to their lowest rate of energy consumption, Soundwave has to conserve what energon he can. Consecutive uses of the groundbridge eat up sizable amounts of power and the spymaster is not certain if energon even exists within the Shadowzone. With luck, he will escape before he is forced to find out. Then again, when has luck _ever_ been on his side?

            Huffing in irritation once more, the Decepticon returns to writing out equations.

* * *

 

            Whatever Shockwave did to cloak his and Starscream’s life signals is working. …A little too well. Not even the surveillance chief can locate them, which is embarrassing. Granted, it’s only because the amount of power he can afford to dedicate to the search is limited…and then there’s the whole being trapped in an alternate fragging dimension…but Soundwave is annoyed nonetheless. Under different circumstances, he might have embraced the challenge, but time is slowly running out. Besides that, the TIC is uncertain if the Autobots ever intend to come retrieve him. He knows it’s unlikely, but weren’t Autobots supposed to be in favor of the old Senate’s trial by jury and all that slag? He _is_ the overall third highest ranking Decepticon and the highest ranked officer they currently have in their clutches with Starscream missing and Lord Megatron-

            Soundwave shoves the sudden wave of grief he feels aside. He’s always prided himself on the degree of control he possesses over his emotions; now is not the time to lose that control. Anyway, unless the Prime had decided to skip straight to the execution (though leaving an enemy to slowly starve to death hardly seems to be Autobot-like behavior), Soundwave finds it somewhat odd he hasn’t been hunted down and put on some sort of mock trial yet. Whatever is going on, he will not surrender. If the treatment he received during his last capture was any indication, the Autobots are hardly the most accepting of outsiders, and Soundwave refuses to risk his last surviving symbiont falling into their servos. Laserbeak is all he has now; as the little mech’s Core, it is Soundwave’s duty to ensure his safety and survival. Which means the TIC must escape.

            …Somehow.

* * *

 

            Loud clanging resounds through the warship’s corridors from the brig whenever Knockout and the other Decepticons kept captive there want to get their Autobot captors’ attention. It doesn’t appear to be working quickly, which is unfortunate. It’s also unfortunate that it irritates Soundwave’s sensitive audials and wears his legendary patience dangerously thin. He briefly considers following Lord Megatron’s or Starscream’s example and going down there in order to personally throttle each and every one of the slaggers until they quit making noise, but then remembers he can’t and instead settles upon burying himself deeper in his work. Algorithm after algorithm, trial after trial fails. The lack of proper recharge is catching up with him and makes his processor hazy. Once the banging finally ceases and makes way for much appreciated silence, the TIC allows himself to slump (very slightly, only barely noticeable to regular mechs) in exhaustion.

            According to his biological readings, his tanks are approximately seventy-two percent full (thank Primus for Laserbeak reminding him to take his rations the morning before that final battle). Given his current rate of power usage, he should last about half a meta-cycle before forcibly entering emergency stasis lock. Paired with the rate of success he’s had with his current escape attempt, this sounds…less than promising. Better to move on to Plan B – leaving the _Nemesis_ and searching for Starscream and Shockwave in person. Surely the Communications Chief can find a way to alert the other two officers of his predicament once he locates them. Shockwave had countless laboratories scattered all over Cybertron during the war; there has to be a functioning groundbridge in at least one of them. If Soundwave cannot bridge himself out, perhaps someone outside the Shadowzone will be able to free him.

            There is one slight catch – Soundwave has an unimaginable amount of information stored within his internal databanks, enough to impress even the likes of Shockwave. However, the location of every single one of the aforementioned scientist’s labs is not among that information. The Decepticon has to wait for someone outside the Shadowzone to access the top secret files containing the lab network and pull it up long enough for him to snap a picture. Thankfully, Soundwave is confident the Autobots will do exactly that very soon; they are still looking to capture the remaining fugitive Decepticons, and Knockout has never been the type to keep information to himself if sharing it was in his better interests (namely, a nice oil bath).

            In the meantime, the spymaster requires rest. Though mechanical life forms can go significantly longer without recharge than organics (and Soundwave can function longer without it than most Cybertronians), nearly four deca-cycles have passed by now and he is at his limit. Despite this, Soundwave still hesitates before finally attempting to relax against a wall and initiate the defrag process. The sooner he begins, the faster he gets it over with.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this part ended up being a lot longer than the last. Eh, it didn't feel right to split it up. Maybe I'll make up for it by adding something to the first part later. What do you guys think? Am I doing okay so far? What do you like and what do you think I can improve on? The thing about Soundwave is that it's hard to make a fic about him without adding headcanons, but I hope I'm not adding too many at once. Thanks for reading, and please leave feedback if you have you have the time! ;)  
> Also, for TFP, I headcanon Soundwave's symbionts as being akin to younger siblings (Ravage is not much younger than him, so I guess she's more like his twin). But if their sparks split from his and their frames begin development inside his spark chamber, would that be considered a form of mpreg? I don't really think of it that way, but just in case, I added a tag for it. Man, alien robots are weird.

           Soundwave loves his job. He really does. He enjoys every part of it – the tapping of keys, the endless strings of code, the occasional (though rare) field missions, the equipment repairs, the cycles upon cycles of glancing through security footage, listening in on conversations, sorting through the reports of hundreds of soldiers, ensuring the _Nemesis’s_ data archives are secured and orderly, blocking access to any forms of entertainment or media that might conflict with Decepticon morals, and even dealing with too-often incompetent coworkers and reporting to fussy seekers…Actually, that last part he can do without, but the point still remains that what the majority of Cybertronians would consider dull as slag, he finds fulfilling. The surveillance chief is also very good at what he does; between his keeping an optic on the ship and its crew and ensuring no one steps out of line, the Decepticon militia functions smoothly more often than not. Soundwave’s frame may have originally been that of a physical laborer, but for all intensive purposes, he was _made_ to be a communications officer. It was a shame Cybertron’s High Council actively discouraged such sentiments; if it hadn’t been for Lord Megatron, Soundwave never would have had the chance to reach his full potential.

            The pre-war Cybertronian society was a large, complex machine. Each member was like a gear meant to be in a certain place to serve a very specific purpose. Tiny pieces of a gigantic puzzle. Of course, some pieces were more valued than others. Only the most important bots such as politicians, medics, scientists and Guild Masters had the privilege of being classified as high caste. The middle caste consisted of the majority of Cybertronian occupations; bots intended to become soldiers, architects, entertainers, engineers, emergency responders, police officers, accountants and many others were placed within it once they completed training in their respective guild after being created. The low caste, however, was only reserved for the work no one else desired to be burdened with and contained all the mechs and femmes the Senate deemed expendable (which was most of them). Pit, most weren’t even designed with unique bodies like the rest of the populace; they were merely forged with a generic frame according to their assigned occupation and given a serial number instead of a true designation (or, as most called their specific portion of the population, drones). Right alongside drones at the rock bottom of society were all the rejects – all the broken and misshapen gears that didn’t meet the standards set by the Council and therefore were replaced.

            Soundwave had been one of the lucky ones. Sort of. He would fly to the ends of the known universe and back for each of his symbionts, but he’s thankful he got to experience at least a few stellar-cycles of an even remotely ordinary life (a simple transport drone – loading and unloading shipments for other cities, always blending in with everyone else, never receiving any strange looks) before his first one emerged. (Even if it had been such a short period so long ago that he barely remembered it.) Split sparks of any kind were considered a defect in drones; his superiors were not pleased. He and Ravage were sold not long afterwards and purchased by a noble who frequented the gladiatorial pits. Arcane was a former surgeon turned crime boss with a fascination for rare spark types and plenty of extra credits to burn. She loved nothing more than modifying Soundwave or one of his symbionts and then observing the effects of the upgrades on their performances in battle. While being a glorified science experiment definitely wasn’t ideal (or pleasant), the young mech figured at the time that it was better than he and his siblings slowly starving to death in Kaon’s slums or being flat out scrapped like so many others of a similar status. Besides, at least Arcane usually avoided touching Ravage and only began occasionally tinkering with Rumble and Frenzy after they had been online for a few centuries. In any case, speaking up only brought trouble. Like most mechs, Soundwave would rather stay quiet and keep his helm down than attract unwanted attention and risk losing what little mattered to him.

            Megatronus was not like most mechs.

            The elder gladiator _lived_ for the spotlight. He not only sought it out, but seized it at every opportunity that arose. Even in the rare instances he didn’t actively pursue it, the attentions of others were naturally drawn to his presence when he entered the room. Soundwave couldn’t blame them. Where so many were dull, Megatronus positively _shined._ He was both powerful and experienced; not a single one of his matches ended in his loss, an impressive feat that earned him fame and many generous offers for sponsorship. However, unlike most gladiators, the former miner was well-spoken – extremely so. Not even the most famous Cybertronian poets (how the youngling imagined them, anyway) could hope to compare to the silver bot’s passionate tales of the Golden Age before the planet’s isolation or the rise and fall of his rumbling tones. Megatronus had this charisma, this aura he gave off that conquered the sparks of his fellow Cybertronians and bent them to his will. The mech was a flawless blend of skill and ferocity combined, a true warrior, scholar, and leader with a track record and shrewd intellect that Soundwave couldn’t help but respect. It wasn’t until Megatronus began publically speaking out against the Senate and their policies that the younger gladiator began to suspect the mech might actually be insane.

            Soundwave swore he had some kind of death wish. _No one_ challenged Cybertron’s leadership. Not seriously. Not without their would-be revolution being crushed before it could even develop past the planning stage. What reason did Megatronus even have to find fault within the caste system? What did he have to gain? He was his own mechanism, had more than enough credits to sustain himself from his various winnings, and had a better reputation than Soundwave could ever _dream_ of possessing; only a fool would jeopardize all of that. Regardless, Megatronus was charming as ever and rapidly gained an audience. His words were blatant treason, but that didn’t appear to matter to any of the others. Even Soundwave’s two youngest symbionts at the time got caught up in the excitement (much to his chagrin).

            A couple vorns of this passed, and Soundwave was shocked they weren’t all dead yet. Perhaps gladiators truly were too low status to merit the Senate’s ire. Still, he cursed his nonexistent luck when Megatronus approached him with a request to train together. Megatronus, the great undefeated warrior who not a deca-cycle before had handed Soundwave’s aft to him in the arena (which was not an easy feat), wanted to _train_ with _him_ , an abomination appearing more alien than Cybertronian that even most gladiators went out of their way to avoid. If the older mech’s insanity hadn’t been obvious before, it was then. Soundwave accepted the invitation, if only to satiate his own curiosity and silence Rumble and Frenzy’s excited begging to come along.

            What he discovered was more than he ever dared hope possible. Megatronus was truly an amazing mech. Though forged shortly after the establishment of the caste system as a lowly miner by the designation of D-16, he always had a sense that something was amiss in Cybertron. The silver mech sought answers and eventually cast aside his original name and assignment to become a gladiator. After reading of the opulence and freedom of Cybertron’s Golden Age and other bits of history, he grew inspired and adopted the title of one of the thirteen original Primes, an act unheard of until then and nigh taboo. Megatronus rose above what was proper of his caste and gained enough status to be comparable to any noble. But instead of using his newfound power to further oppress those he left behind in his conquest, the silver warlord outstretched a servo. He looked at bots like Soundwave and his symbionts and saw not freaks to be feared or repulsed by, but brothers and sisters. He was the first to view them as equals. The sentiment did not go unnoticed. Rumble and Frenzy absolutely idolized him. Ravage, who always took a while to warm up to others, even quickly grew fond of the mech. Maybe it was the admiration spilling over from the bonds he shared with the rest of his System, or the pressure of sensing a new fragment of his spark about to split that Arcane hadn’t yet discovered, or even the newfound hope that he and his younger siblings (both the ones he already had and those to come) could have a real future, but it wasn’t long before the warlord’s dream of a caste-free Cybertron became his dream as well. He joined the Cause and never looked back.

            Soundwave was never really one for optimism, but Lord Megatron had ways of changing that. He looked at the oppressed masses, understood their frustration, pain and humiliation, and organized them into a unified force. He amplified their voices so that they could no longer be ignored. He gave them purpose, a _reason_ to fight. As the political climate in Cybertron shifted and civil war consumed the planet, Lord Megatron fearlessly stood by his Decepticons. He completed them. He was their shining beacon in a world filled with darkness; he was their hope.

            He was ripped away.

            Soundwave was never an optimistic mech, but with his leader gone, his hope died almost completely. Lord Megatron may have had a gift for cheating death, but not even he could evade its clutches forever. That didn’t stop the image of the once fierce glow in his optics fading as the life left his frame from haunting the surveillance chief. When he was startled out of recharge some cycles later by the Autobots frantically radioing their Prime about the arrival of a certain reanimated warlord, Soundwave refused to hope that some sliver of the mech he pledged himself to still remained within that Unicron-infested husk. Even if the older Decepticon’s spark had managed to not be completely extinguished when the blasted scout pierced his torso (and that was a very _big_ ‘if’), the thought that his liege might be eternally trapped in his own body with a mad god pulling the strings made the TIC’s protoform crawl. All these things occurring around him and he was powerless to intervene.

            But now, as he watches his master rise to his pedes free of Unicron’s possession and _alive_ , he can’t bring himself to care about what has occurred over the last several deca-cycles. Lord Megatron has returned – that is all that matters. For the first time in far too long, Soundwave feels all the tension drain out of his frame. The Decepticon forces remain in shambles, their only surviving medic has defected, they’re surrounded by Autobots on a barely functioning Cybertron, and Soundwave and Laserbeak are still trapped within the Shadowzone, but the young mech hardly takes notice of any of it. It won’t be much longer now, after all. Lord Megatron will liberate them once again. Their troops will be rallied, he and Laserbeak will not be abandoned, the Cause will live on. Lord Megatron is here, everything will be f-

            “No!” Everything freezes. For a split second, Soundwave’s surroundings seem even darker. He thinks he hears Starscream blurt out something about walking around the smelting pit, but the TIC only has optics and audials for Lord Megatron. “The Decepticons are no more…and _that is final._ ” Just like that, the mech transforms and flies off, leaving Soundwave to stare numbly in his wake. He barely notices when Starscream quickly jets off not long after. The restoration of the Well is a mere footnote in his processor. The spymaster isn’t sure how long he stands in place before he damns it all to the Pit and flies far, far away, not caring where his wings take him.

            _“Your potential far exceeds what most believe you capable of. Yet here you are trapped within the confines of this_ caste system _.” Megatronus uttered the last two words with such contempt. He turned his gaze fully towards the younger mech then, optics alight with ambition. “I intend to change that.”_

Before he knows it, he is transforming into root mode. His pedes touch the ground, and the mech recognizes his surroundings as Kaon, the old Decepticon capital.

            _“Does he have a name?”_

_The youngling glanced up from where he’d been cleaning the inside of his spark chamber and quirked an optic ridge._

_“Your symbiont.” Megatronus nodded towards the frame delicately cupped in his servos. The tiny creature had only just emerged, but it was already obvious he was going to be quite the sight once he grew larger. The bitlet resembled the young gladiator’s eldest symbiont, but unlike his sister – unlike_ Ravage _, he was still learning the name, this one had leathery wings attached to his spindly arms. The younger Cybertronian shrugged drowsily before returning to his cleanup. Megatronus chuckled, a deep sound that reverberated pleasantly in the other’s audials. “You’re all free to claim real ones now, you know. You are owned by no one.”_

_He knew. And even solar-cycles later, he still couldn’t fully wrap his helm around it. The other three in his System may have already chosen new titles for themselves (and eagerly offered to pick one for him), but nothing he considered sounded right to his audials. Didn’t mean he wasn’t excited or grateful. Once his spark chamber was spotless, the youngling closed his chest plates and reached for his newest sibling._

_“I dunno. You name him.”_

_Megatronus regarded him for several kliks, simply observing the way he hummed a quiet tune to the bitlet before his grey faceplates split into a toothy grin. “I am undecided for him, but if you would like, old friend, I believe I have the perfect one for you.”_

At the heart of the former industrial city lies the spot where Megatron had a statue of himself erected. It’s nothing but a pile of rubble now.

            _He could feel the Decepticon warlord’s gaze burning into him (concerned, probably, but not outwardly displaying it) as he kneeled in front of his throne, but he paid no mind to it. The pain in his spark was too great. There were two more pairs of optics on him, but Soundwave was too ashamed to meet them or respond to their miserable nudges over the bond. His last two living symbionts deserved far better than him, a pathetic excuse for a Core that failed to protect even the fragments of his spark that would have developed into future bitlets. Now, Ravage and countless undeveloped others were all offline and poor Laserbeak was stuck in a primitive frame following an injury during his development. Soundwave’s only comfort was that his own body had not gone unscathed. After the ambush, the communications officer awoke in Shockwave’s lab with an almost completely different frame, a screen for a face, a permanently altered voice box and a hollow feeling in his spirit. With so much lost, their species’ steep population decline, the growing need for a mass exodus as Cybertron continued to die, and the war approaching five million stellar-cycles old, desperate measures had to be taken to ensure the continued perseverance of the Cause. And Soundwave knew one thing that had to be done._

_“…Last, Soundwave: has no more need for words. Body, efforts, life: dedicated to Lord Megatron and Lord Megatron alone.”_

_Megatron, the mech who had been there with him through it all and risked his own hide in order to rescue Soundwave that last time, nodded and spoke, “Rise, Decepticon, and serve your master.”_

_Silently, he rose._

Soundwave feels his servo curl into a fist.

            _“…I now know the true meaning of oppression…”_

_“The Decepticons are no more…and that is final.”_

            And he screams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time References I'm Using:  
> A nano-klik is roughly 1 Earth second  
> A klik is roughly 1.2 Earth minutes  
> A breem is roughly 8.3 Earth minutes  
> A cycle is roughly 2 hours  
> A solar-cycle is roughly 24 hours  
> A mega-cycle is roughly 93 hours  
> A deca-cycle is roughly 3 weeks  
> A stellar-cycle is roughly 7.5 months  
> A meta-cycle is roughly 13 months  
> A vorn is roughly 83 Earth years

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, guys. I don't want to come across like I'm begging, but if you have time, could you please leave feedback? I've really been struggling with writer's block for the last several months, and no matter what I do, everything I write sounds wrong (if that makes sense). I've been trying to finish this fic for months now, but eventually I gave up and decided to just post the first part (this was supposed to be one big oneshot) until I can figure out the rest. I'm sorry it's so short and awful, but this is my first TF fic and I would really appreciate any advice you guys can give me. I've never had a beta reader, but maybe now is the time to find one. Anyway, I'm sorry for sounding so desperate. Either way, hopefully this thing is at least somewhat entertaining. Thanks for reading and have a great day!


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